NAZI PROSPECTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 March 1942, Page 4

NAZI PROSPECTS

FACTS SET AGAINST •ALLIED SETBACKS GROWING POWER OF UNITED NATIONS. EMPHASISED BY BRITISH MINISTER. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, March 22. “If Hitler’s hordes break themselves against the rock of Russian resistance, then for a certainty Hitler himself and all he stands for will be broken.” This forthright declaration was made today in a speech by Mr Ernest Thurtle, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information, at the close of Northampton's Russia Week. Mr Thurtle made no attempt to minimise the setbacks sustained from France to the Far East, but he warned against the habit of thinking the war had been a long series of setbacks. The British had their triumphs on land, sea and air. Mr Thurtle went on to declare emphatically that no compromise peace was possible. He drew a vivid picture of the results of an Allied defeat, Britain’s system of national and local government would be smashed. All liberties, political and civil, would disappear. Trade unions and co-opera-tive societies would be destroyed. Freedom of speech and assembly would disappear. The workers would pass into industrial serfdom, and concentration camps or worse would be the lot of many. “Unless we arc prepared to forfeit all the things for which our forefathers fought, we have got to see, this war through to< a victorious finish,” he said. “It is necessary that we should be crystal clear as to what is involved in this struggle.” Mr Thurtle concluded with a sketch of the prospect facing Germany. In the east she faced the shadow of unconquered, mighty Russia, while in the west loomed the menace of America’s colossal resources and Britain’s own ever-growing power on land and sea, and, above all, in the air. On top of this were the sullen anger and resentment of the great masses of people in the conquered territories which were likely, whenever conditions became favourable, to become a flame of open revolt.